Barbwire: FantasyLand

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005
Remember her laughter

On January 16, 1959, two babies were born.
They became sisters in both life and death.

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
12-18-1947 / 10-18-2023

UPDATE: WORLDWIDE LEADER? ACT OF GOD OR JUST A GARDEN-VARIETY IMPOSSIBLE DREAMER? ALL OF THE ABOVE? VERY POSSIBLY. Was Andrew Barbano the only advocate for an American pope? Google apparently says YES! At minimum, the Barbwire stumped and broke Google trying to find out. See for yourself. And please lemme know what you think.

Big news. Prayers answered: Pope takes on T-Rump head-to-head.
Thank heaven he's openly a counterweight to the Orange Crusher, as I hoped on 4-23-2025

Welcome to FantasyLand boys and girls
Barbwire by Andrew Barbano / Expanded from the 3-11-2026 Sparks Tribune [Expansions in blue]

Greatest Hits Dept.

BREAKING NEWS—>

BOXCARS!
Barbwire wins 12th Nevada Press Association award

Hi yo Silver 2025
3-12-2025
4-17-2024
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Nevada Press Assn.
Hall of Fame
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7-31-2025 Barbwire Winner
Congratulations to Barbwire nominee Norman Cardoza, 1977 Pulitzer Prize winner, Reno Gazette-Journal

2024 Barbwire Winners!

Jake Highton & Guy Louis Rocha 2024 honorees BUENO!

Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame (2019)

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT (2012)

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Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017-18

2018 First-Place Winners
From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies

"Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read."
— NPA contest judge/9-29-2018

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly
9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada
10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored
12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

More statewide and national award winners

We Don't Need No Education—>
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1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days
mp3 file

The Dean's List

The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential
TOP SECRET— HushHush!

If legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite wuz alive, he'd be turnin' over in his grave. The former Tiffany of Networks, CBS, is now MAGALAND.

By now, you are probably aware that President Bulsha Tartist allowed the takeover of CBS/Paramount by his billionaire buddies in exchange for cancelling Stephen Colbert's late night show. They are now swallowing up TimeWarner/Discovery/CNN.

Monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.

Ms. Bari Weiss, the new and totally unqualified head of CBS News, fired the third-place, short-tenured but qualified co-anchors for a studly new guy. Lotsa luck, dude. Old wine. New bottle. Trust must be earned.

The second thing the new boss did was censor 60 Minutes. The network was so inept that the cancelled segment accidentally ran in Canada, then went wild online. The original ran in the U.S. a few weeks later. It revealed brutal conditions at El Salvador’s CECOT prison for T-Rump-deported Venezuelan migrants.

Politically incorrect, eh wot?

Colbert was prohibited from interviewing James Talarico, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Texas. T-Rump's shill at the Federal Communications Commission said Colbert would have to offer time to every Texas candidate if he ran just one. Any excuse to censor.

Colbert nonetheless interviewed Talarico on YouTube and it out-rated his CBS show. Want to get people to watch? Tell them they can't because you've decided it's bad for them.

CBS just premiered a new show entitled "CIA." They also run three back-to-back "FBI" episodes every week. Somewhere in the Seventh Circle of Hell, J. Edgar Hoover is laughing.

FBI Director-for-Life Hoover held the media and Washington in a death grip 'tll the day he died in office. He had files of blackmail on everybody who was anybody.

In the original FBI series (1965-74), they were not allowed to even mention the words "Mafia" or "organized crime." Scripts had to be personally approved by Hoover and had to be generic cops-and-robbers boring. Actors playing agents had to mind Hoover's strict dress code — black suits and tightly-tied black ties and white shirts, no stripes. Actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. had to voice the specific section of U.S. Code that his agents would proceed under before every operation.

FantasyLand, indeed.

The same policy was voiced by future Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman when the top-gun lawyer was the mouthpiece for the Gomorrah South mob. I once saw him say "there is no organized crime. That's just an excuse by the cops because they can't control street crime."

When asked about that after he was sworn in, Hizzoner said that's what he had to do for his thuggish clients.

Why was the man for whom the DC FBI HQ is named so protective of the mob? Legend has it that New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello had pictures of J. Edgar in a dress. He took two weeks off every year to go to the Big Easy with his number two guy at the agency and stay together in a posh hotel.

Ain't love grand?

I have channel-surfed the FBI series and I'm sure the new CIA will be the same — pretty people, personal hangups, at least one chase sequence and at least one shootout per episode.

Reality is otherwise. T-Rump's FBI almost makes me wish J. Edgar was back. It's that bad. CBS is committing ratings suicide by dramatizing cops-and-robbers fantasy.

CAPTAIN KIRK, CALL YOUR OFFICE. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes ran the latest in its nine-year series of CIA coverups of Havana Syndrome.

Now it's been revealed that it wasn't just nervous tension by several hundred workers. The Russians have developed a death ray that uses microwave bursts to short-circuit your brain and fry your ears. It even crushes ear bones. Star Trek's phaser raygun is now in production and being sold for $15 million a crack by the Russian mafia.

US government employees, especially embassy workers, have been disabled worldwide over the past decade. The CIA covered it up largely because they didn't want to interrupt business as usual. Hell, you can always hire more employees, right?

America has long suffered for CIA ineptitude. They could tell you what the head of the Russian army had for breakfast but totally missed the Soviet Union's 1979 collapse.

Gotta hunch you won't see that in the new CBS CIA fantasy series.

SHERYL ATKISSON— PRETTY POISON. In recent years, the former CNN anchor has anchored the Sinclair Broadcasting series "Full Measure." Sinclair is a media monster, running more than 200 TV stations with three in this region: KRNV aka News 4, Fox-11 and KNSN-21 aka Nevada Sports Network.

Sinclair daily orders local newscasts to run items from its Washington bureau skewed ala Fox News. Ms. Atkisson's show last weekend told a big lie — that Obamacare is responsible for high prescription drug prices and that T-Rump is fixing it with T-Rump Rx. President Bullsha Tartist, our greedy mad king, rules.

Cue the National Institutes of Health website: "The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, signed by (Republican) President George W. Bush, created Medicare Part D but explicitly prohibited the federal government from negotiating lower prescription drug prices. This 'non-interference' clause was designed to encourage private plan competition."

That's a big reason why Medicare Advantage generates $80 billion a year for Big Pharma and profit-gouging/health care-cutting insurance companies.

WORDS TO LAUGH BY. T-Rump's State of the Union speechathon was like the state of an onion — both guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes.

Get the latest boosters, protect yourself and your family, mask yourself up to melt ICE, and continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Sarah Mullally (the new Archbishop of Canterbury), and the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours. May we survive WW3.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)

COMING NEXT WEEK: PUSH ME/PULL YOU POLITICAL POLLS. (Apologies to Dr. Doolittle)

Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 57-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US,ConsumerCoalitionv.org,ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MississippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member and former vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and a member Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid.

Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster
By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Under the Blood Moon—>Little boys playing with war toys
Barbwire by Andrew Barbano / Expanded from the 3-4-2026 Sparks Tribune

The 2025 Barbwire Blue-footed Booby Prizes
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno/ Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 12-31-2025/
UPDATED 1-1 & 1-2-2026 / Expansions in blue

11-16-2022 EDITION

The Blue-footed Booby Awards are judged by a committee even more exclusive than the Nobel Prizes. Namely, me.

First, meet our namesakes. Said booby is a marine bird resembling a long-beaked seagull with webbed feet wider than a duck's. Bright baby-blue footsies.

The booby's vivid paddles "play a key role in its mating display," according to bird watchers, "a sexually selected trait." Politics with a lascivious mating dance. What's not to like?

The booby's distinctive face looks at photographers with a slightly irritated expression bordering on contempt. It conveys "my, you poor human, born so plainly repulsive and useless. No feathers, no wings, no fins, no webbing. How long can such a species survive?"
Herewith, the latest but unfortunately not the last Barbwire Blue-footed Booby Prizes, researching for which we spared every expense, as usual.

1. NEVADA GOV. GIUSEPPE LUMBAGO gets the win by default from his idol, Czar Donaldov. In 2023, the freshman pol set the record for most legislative torpedoes, eclipsing the old mark set by another Republican, Gov. Veto El Obtusé, now University of Nevada-Reno president.

El Veto at least knew how to win a special legislative session to give away the biggest corporate welfare scam in state history. His $1.4 billion gift to Elon Musk and Tesla became the principal driver of clogging our roads and starving our schools.

This year, Giuseppe tried to break the record. Almost $2 billion for Hollywood studios fell flat on its botoxed face. How can you be so inept as to spend about a million for a special session and not have the votes lobbied up front? He was so over his head that sophomore Assemblymember Selena La Rue Hatch, D-Reno, came within one vote of killing it on the first day. (Barbwire 11-19-2025)

2. T-RUMP THE TERRIBLE. I placed him second for one reason: He hates to be second at anything. The diss is well-deserved. To chronicle all his depredations, you'd have to build an entire library filled with books he would never read. (Books are soooo 20th Century!)

I will just focus on one, his mania for having the biggest, be it oil reserves (think Venezuela) or impeachments (two, thus far).

Now he wants to build the biggest baddest-ever sitting ducks...er, battleships. Those behemoths became obsolete with the dawn of aircraft carriers. (See the movie "Sink the Bismarck.")

Another megalomaniac ordered construction of the biggest war weapons ever, including tanks so large that no roads could accommodate them. Steel sitting ducks, indeed.

Lemme see, what was his name? Oh yeah, Adolf Schicklgruber, aka Hitler.

3. CBS. The former Tiffany of Networks lived up to its nickname. Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was about a high-priced prostitute.

T-Rump's price for pushing the stalled CBS takeover by a corporate octopus entailed cancellation of Stephen Colbert's number one late-night show. And apparently censoring "60 Minutes." Paramount-CBS now wants to gorge on Time-Warner, the bribe for which will be gutting CNN.

4. THE CITY OF SPARKS "NOT-MY-DEPARTMENT" BUILDING DEPT. which did and has done nothing about those rat-trap apartments on Victorian Blvd. downtown. (Barbwire 11-5-2025)

5. THE TRUCKEE MEADOWS WATER AUTHORITY which continues to lift not a finger to inform customers that condominium owners may not need water line insurance which duplicates homeowners association coverage. (Barbwire Nevada Press Foundation Award winner, 4-17-2024) Insurance companies are making a ton of money as TMWA gives its customers the finger. (More soon.)

6. NEVADA U.S. SENATORS CORTEZ-MASTO AND ROSEN, both D, for voting to end the government shutdown and cave on health insurance cost increases. Come January, another government shutdown looms as insurance rates skyrocket. Déjà vu all over again, eh wot?

7. MACHINE GUN MICHELE FIORE, my Italian fantasy girl who leads a charmed life. The non-lawyer MAGA moonhowler, defrocked as a Nye County judge after a felony conviction, was pardoned by her favorite president. She now wants her old job back. She's a literal blue booby winner. Photos proving so will be linked to the Barbwire web edition at NevadaLabor.com/ (Barbwire 3-10-2015 and many others. Websearch "nevadalabor.com fiore" and see what you get. Wotta lotta.)

Welcome back, amor mei.

8. BUTT-UGLY AND DEPRESSING CRACKERBOX APARTMENT HOUSES sprouting like weeds throughout Sparks-Reno-Washoe. Apparently the architects who designed Cold War East Berlin have found work. Where the hell is ICE when deportation is so richly deserved?

9. VACCINE DENIERS, one of whom just gave Washoe County its first case of measles since 2018. The old baby killer is back with a vengeance and T-Rump's government doesn't give a rat's ass. If they need one, check out those Victorian Blvd. apartments.

10. SINCLAIR PSEUDO-FOX BROADCASTING, operators of local TV channels KRXI FOX-11, Nevada Sports Net KNSN-21 and KRNV formerly known as NBC TV-4. A few weeks ago, they moved liberal-ish NBC-4 to 11.2 for the underclass like me who refuse to pay for programs on publicly-owned airwaves. Sinclair, which runs over 200 stations, severely juggled dial positions for a passel of local signals and promised that pay TV households would see no difference. (Barbwire 12-3-2025). That didn't last long.

Last Sunday, I got a call from a distraught Spectrum cable customer who could not get the 49ers-Bears game on NBC-4. I told her to try channel 3 or 118, where Sinclair just moved them.

Corporate America, now well into its third century of treating customers with contempt.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS. Georgia Republican congresscritter Marjorie Taylor-Green who has made a big deal of resigning after exactly five years in the US House. Exactly when lifetime insurance and retirement benefits kick in. Crocodile tears.

Speaking of insurance, are you sick of those Colonial Penn life insurance ads that say you can never be canceled once you start handing them money? Hmmm...try not paying monthly premiums and see what happens.

As the late great R-rated comedienne Rusty Warren once sang, bounce your boobies.

Hope you and yours enjoyed Happy High Holly Days.

Get the latest boosters, protect yourself and your family by masking up, continue praying for the oppressed, unenlightened and unvaccinated as well as Popes Leo and Francis, the Dalai Lama, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia and the world's more than 160 currently war-torn lands, including ours.

¡Sí se puede! Or, as they say in Poland, SOLIDARNOSC!

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid.

Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster
By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

Let it Be: An American Pope Francis2
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-23-2025, uploaded 4-22-2025

Pinky & the Brain taking over the world
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-2-2025

Ain't we a pair?
Dennis Myers & Andrew Barbano inducted into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-10-2024

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005
Remember her laughter

On January 16, 1959, two babies were born.
They became sisters in both life and death.

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
12-18-1947 / 10-18-2023

To Die For
My daughters were born 65 years ago yesterday. Alas, their youth was cut in twain.
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-17-2024

Web Xtras & Smoking Guns—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

Breaking News —> Masks work!

And the plague is rampant once again. Be very afraid.

Trump Victory Would Be a Public Health Disaster
By Whistleblower Rick Bright/New York Times/10-10-2024

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For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)

Barbwire dark foreshadowings unfortunately have a way of becoming reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later
How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.

The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)

The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" — Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24
By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

Wasting workers where everybody knows your name
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-18-2023

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Andrew Barbano is a 56-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He was the longtime executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and has been a quarter-century member and 10- year officer of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since. His first byline in the paper came in 1973.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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